Indigenous Communities Building Historical Memory to Create Alternative Justice

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1 Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize Letter Home 1 Press conference on La Otra Justicia at Frayba. March 3rd, Photo March 2016 The beginning of this month stunned the world with the news of the assassination of the Mother Earth and human rights defender Bertha Cáceres, who was part of the Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH). COPINH is a social and political organization born in 1993 through the popular and indigenous Lenca movement from the department of Intibuca. This organization has struggled for the defense of the environment, its rights, and the Lenca culture. Some years ago it launched a campaign against the hydroelectric dam of Agua Zarca, one of many megaprojects concessioned after the coup d etat of 2009 that aimed to provide mining projects of the region cheap energy, and whose construction would devastate the Gualcarque River. Lenca communities, besides being displaced and affected by this construction, consider this river sacred, and adamantly opposed this dam in their assemblies. They were never asked or consulted about this project, although having a right to a free, previous and informed consent guaranteed by the 169 ILO

2 Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize Letter Home 2 Convention. The campaign s pressure made the main stakeholder, Synohydro Corporation from China, and the International Financing Corporation, the World Bank s main investor, withdraw from the project. During this campaign, three members of the Copinh were assassinated before Bertha Caceres. During this time, Caceres had received death threats and threats against her family. Days after her murder, on March 15, COPINH member Nelson García was also assassinated in the community of Rio Chiquito, which was displaced the same day by the police. These tragedies are not isolated, they are in fact systematic: in the country, between 2002 and 2014, 111 environmental activists were murdered; Honduras had the highest rate of murders against environmental activists in Three quarters of the 116 murders of environmental activists in the world occured in Honduras, Brasil, and Perú, followed by other Latin American countries. The brutal extraction and exploitation of Latin American people in the present only reflects the continual colonial programs perpetuated by the same, old countries as well as new, growing capitalist entities. The increased planning of huge mining, damming, and infraestructure projects demonstrates a complete environmental, economic, and political impunity that discards the well-being of those historically marginalized, and, one can say, the majority of humanity. Bertha Caceres is one visibilized organizer who has been murdered by transnational corporations and the State. But there has been thousands of people who have been forcefully disappeared and killed for defending their rights and the rights of our Mother Earth. The night Bertha was murdered, an environmental activist and defender named Gustavo Castro Soto, founder of the organization Otros Mundos in Chiapas, was staying in Bertha's home and was injured, but survived the attack. In spite of the enormous risk staying in Honduras represented, the Honduras government declared a 30 day immigration alert and banned him from leaving the country, declaring him a key witsness and possible suspect who

3 Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize Letter Home 3 had to stay and work on his declaration and investigation of the case. There has been many petitions and denunciations regarding the conditions to which he is subject while detained and the multiple violations of his rights in banning him from returning to Mexico. During these same days, the Frayba Human Rights Center presented the final compilation of the Forum we worked on called The Other Justice, which took place in October. I have already shared quite a bit about this material in my October Letter, but here I will translate what was said for one part of the presentation (the remaining portion, in Spanish, can be found in the above link): Walking the path of The Other Justice, a reflection of indigenous peoples in their construction of Lekil Chapanel (true, real, justice), was a process that spanned various months, and realized through three preforums and a final forum. The first preforum took place in the community of Masojá Shucjá, Tila; the second one in Acteal, Chenalhó; and the third one in the community of Ojo de Agua Tseltal, Ocosingo. Finally, we all came together in the Forum Walking the Other Justice, in the House of Memory and Hope, of the Sacred Land of the Martyrs of Acteal, Chenalhó. In these spaces the participation of the communities had the objective of evidencing the strategy of counterinsurgency and genocide against María Vazquez, survivor of the Acteal Massacre, speaks about La Otra Justicia. Photo

4 Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize Letter Home 4 indigenous peoples that resist in Chiapas in the context of war. In this path, we reflected on that Other Justice, where the necessity to demand, denounce and organize for Truth, Memory and Justice, became clearer. We also wanted to record the reflection of the peoples on their building of Lekil Chapanel, or Justicia Verdadera. To walk the Other Justice means to have alternatives in the face of impunity. Examples of these alternatives are spaces of memory, places of remembering, and places of dignity that people have reconfigured and transformed in centers of struggle. They are symbols of resistance that are against oblivion. Walking the Other Justice and resignifying spaces of memory is not possible without the presence, word, struggle, and hope of women. The Other Justice, without them, is contradictory, and reproduces a form of justice we don t want, where they are excluded. From their perspective, women have expressed that organizing is the base of resistance, and that the path is not the classic western justice, because that is the path of oblivion: We believe in the Other Justice, a total, complete, thorough justice. With this backdrop in mind, a few days later, on March 8th, we joined the march that Las Abejas organize every year for International Women s Day, where they visibilized their rights and demands as women. This year, for the first time, the march entered the municipal head town of Chenalhó, a very courageous and strong act, given that the municipal president in 1997 financed and trained the paramilitary groups that displaced thousands of people, killed and disappeared dozens and committed what is known as the Acteal Massacre. But they do

5 Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize Letter Home 5 not only acknowledge their history this day. They also remembered the fire in the textile factory that burned 146 women, whose labor rights and dignity were violated, and related it to their own experience. In the public plaza, they declared: Only in Mexico, for eight years and a half, from December 2006 to August 2015, does the violent death of Mexicans amount to 151,233 people, that is, 47 people everyday on average, which is as if, daily, there was an Acteal Massacre. They repeated that the blood of their relatives massacred in Acteal is not for sale, and they won't sell out to the government. They ended their march and held mass in the Church before departing back to their communities. Finally, we have received news that Xinich, an indigenous community organization that has been struggling since at least 1992, announced a 7-day pilgrimage to highlight the upcoming 10th conmemoration of the Viejo Velasco Massacre that occurred on November 13th, The pilgrimage will be a memorial, as well as a denunciation of the lack of justice and investigation of the case. They will also denounce the megaproyects affecting surrounding communities in the Lacandon jungle and the Jungle region of Chiapas, such as the hydroelectric dam planned for the Usumacinta River bordering northern Chiapas and Tabasco. More on this will come next month.